Sprint #3 11/30/2012

[MysteryMan]

As for PayPal alternatives, VISA is currently undergoing a series of tests against our test site. Once they are finished (assuming they don't have any issues) we will be approved and go online.

hope it will be finished before end of gold packs and ex packs at shop

VISA estimates we will be approved some time tomorrow (if there aren't any issues on our end) which means best case scenario of being pushed from test to prod is Thursday.

[onegin]

VISA estimates we will be approved some time tomorrow (if there aren't any issues on our end) which means best case scenario of being pushed from test to prod is Thursday.

what the status?

[MysteryMan]

VISA estimates we will be approved some time tomorrow (if there aren't any issues on our end) which means best case scenario of being pushed from test to prod is Thursday.

what the status?

We passed their tests.

Expect it to go live in production tonight or tomorrow.

[Peralisc9001]

Ya that probably will get you many players back since many are locked away from spending.

Anyways, when can we expect next sprint and what can we expect of it?

[MysteryMan]

Ya that probably will get you many players back since many are locked away from spending.

Anyways, when can we expect next sprint and what can we expect of it?

The current plan is this, but as always it's subject to change. Need to go over it with the group come this weekend.
- The first batch of voice actors and actresses should be ready. This was a task from previous sprints that was a continual effort in the background.
- The new registration experience should be going online. No more clicking hundreds of times with no context.
- The planning for the auction house to make sure it doesn't break the game will be taken care of.
- Possible improvements to the support system
- While sprint #3 was successful in getting us ready to increase velocity of future sprints, this sprint itself failed to meet my expectations from a productivity standpoint with its own tasks and you'll be seeing catch-up work (card list and chat client going live).
- Something shiny to make up for the lack of shiny stuff this sprint.

There should be a >20x productivity gain next sprint compared to this one, as tremendous effort was put in for future growth which will start paying off in Jan.

[CainHyde]

MM, Just curious...
Fixing the avatar change menu, is it included in something shiny that you mentioned?

Thanks...

[MysteryMan]

MM, Just curious...
Fixing the avatar change menu, is it included in something shiny that you mentioned?

Thanks...

You asked for it and we have the resources now, so I don't see why not.

[DeeGee]

What exactly is game-breaking about the auction house? Alt abuse?

Look, MM...

Gran=time. If someone is "abusing" the auction house, they still have to get the gran on their alts from somewhere. If you say from Crest TBs, well, then they're just doing a different form of work. Say you play 10 games an hour (this is being generous) and on average get a 7.5 gran recycle value (mostly 1*s, some 2*s, occasional 3*?). You also do MM for 10 gran and the tutorial. Each alt takes you, oh, 4 hours to stock up, at the end of which, you may have 1000 gran, right?

Minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.15 an hour, dude.

If someone is "abusing" the auction house, that means they're willing to work for less than minimum wage just so they don't whip out their credit card.

Are you really that determined to stamp out "abuse" that you'd be willing to take away the right to work for a third of minimum wage for someone for whom it's so important not to break that spending barrier?

Honestly, if someone's time is so non-valuable to them that they'd work for a third of minimum wage, let them do as they please.

The only downside to this abuse is that you'd have the occasional vet alt who's out to not break the magic circle running around with a starter in Crest stomping on the real newbies. Yes, that's a problem, but that's more a function of the fact that the reward (read: accessibility) in Alteil is so freaking poor that someone would need to resort to that in the first place.

Conclusion: there is no abuse. There is only poor accessibility stemming from trying to force every last penny from anyone who may potentially have pocket change burning a hole in their pocket.

With that kind of a philosophy, this game will go down the tubes...AGAIN. Right now, you guys need to worry about building up a large player base, and make the game as inviting and welcoming for all sorts of players, rather than have it be a tiny sandbox and try to squeeze as much cash from each individual player. As I've said and GonFreeces has put in his signature:

There's a whole internet of people who you should aim to get $10-$20 from, not try to lure in a few suckers who'll fall to the fallacy of sunk costs and spend thousands. This has been tried up to this point and we have a handful of players playing in one of the most expensive sandboxes on the internet. Einstein said the definition of insanity was attempting the same thing and expecting different results. How much longer will you continue with the old business models, instead of trying something drastically different?

[Logress]

Well, it certainly makes sense that someone would rather work a real job for 4X the amount per hour, but the data doesn't support it. In reality, any internet/gaming professional will tell you that if these holes exist, they will be leveraged, and over time this will increase by larger and large amounts until it cripples your game. If you let anything scale up such as making alts, it will until it ruins the game for others. Do you think there will be the occasional high level person aggressively leveling up through crest for the treasure battles to give to his main? Really? You know the hardcore grinders. Newbies will be going to Folrart because the chances of getting an Underdog player there will be higher than the chances of getting a non aggressive grinder in Crest. Exploits like this need to be reasoned out at the beginning stage, anything else is bad, lazy design. We've got enough of that built in, god knows, we don't need to repeat the same mistakes in new code.

And obviously the goal is not make 10-20$ dollars each from 10X the number of users, it's to make 5-10$ each from 100 times the users. Unfortunately, getting a new customer has a cost (such things as advertising, PR, customer service, etc), and getting a new paying customer has a higher cost. For Alteil as it is now, the cost of getting a user who will spend $20 is significantly higher than $20 (search the interwebs for discussions about Zynga's fall for more on this phenomenon). As for the factors that can lower this cost, we have consulted with a number of industry professionals and did our own research. To be honest most of the answers were some form of "make the game more mainstream" (IE, lose the anime art, remove the strategy elements from the game, etc) which we didn't feel were particularly right for Alteil. However, we did get some useful info and that's what put us on the path we are now.

The idea of the marketplace was mostly added because we're starting to feel like we don't have enough time to reach the end of our path before the game implodes if we don't do something. In a marketplace, the players will (eventually) set the prices. Even if the cost of packs from us don't change, the number purchased from us should be more than enough to provide circulation, when added to cards from other sources. Once prices are set, buying packs from us will be something that resellers do, after calculating the money they can make on the average set of pulls. One Bringer will pay for the pack, and the rest of it will be be enough cards to supply two or three newbies with the cards to make a whole file, essentially. Non-resellers might not even consider buying from the game in that case. Personally, as someone who has always worked in business, I kind of like the escape from competitive market economy playing video games brings me, but it may be the only kind of solution that will actually 'fix' the economy, and grow and change as the game does.

[CainHyde]

While you are here Logress, what your opinion about selling complete set?
Totally impossible/never think about it/it's complicated?